Where are your pants?

The Baltimore Police Department has run out of pants.

Officials have placed an emergency order for the department's most popular sizes, 36 and 38, and are waiting on the shipment. New officers receive four pairs of the standard-issue navy pants each upon being hired and other officers may trade in their old pants for new ones at any time.

"We are officially out,'' Officer Troy Harris, a police spokesman, told the Associated Press. "We're putting in an emergency order for those two sizes.''

Until the emergency order goes through, each new officer who is a size 36 or 38 will have no pants. Having recently hired 240 new police officers, well, that's a lot of pantsless police.

Why I'm in love with Linda Greenhouse...

In her Supreme Court Memo in yesterday's Times, she was talking about how often the Roberts court might overturn precedents, and she referred back to Arlen Specter's line of questioning in Roberts' confirmation hearings. Specter had asked Roberts if he agreed that Roe v. Wade was more than just a precedent, but a "super-duper precedent," because it had been revisited and reaffirmed in 1992. Then:

The nominee obviously knew exactly what Mr. Specter was driving at, but he gave
away nothing. He acknowledged the historical accuracy of the senator’s
chronology, but would not follow him to the land of “super-duper” precedents.

And this is why I'm in love with Linda Greenhouse.

(Incidentally, the lede was pretty awesome too: No Supreme Court nominee could be confirmed these days without paying homage to the judicial doctrine of “stare decisis,” Latin for “to stand by things decided.” Yet experienced listeners have learned to take these professions of devotion to precedent “cum grano salis,” Latin for “with a grain of salt.”)

Full story here.

I'm sorry, you're just not good enough for our poop.

I just essentially got rejected for a volunteer gig called "Kitten cage cleaner" with a cat rescue group.

Step aside, Tony Snow

I was just on the phone with the spokesman for, let's say XYZ Co. I was trying to find out some information about a project that began about a year ago but is making its way into a town in our coverage area next week. My conversation went something like this:

I asked a general question about the project. He said XYZ Co. had a press conference a year and a half ago and if I wanted this information I should have come to the press conference. I said that I wasn't here a year and a half ago, and it would have thus been very unlikely for me to attend his press conference.

He said someone at our newspaper should have attended it. I said I understood his concerns but this story has been assigned to me and I can't find any information in our archives about this project. Could he please just give me some information?

He said he had a plane to catch soon.

I asked if there was someone else who might be able to provide some information, or if I could find it online. He said he was the only one who was allowed to provide information.

Then he proceeded to lecture me about how there's no point in holding press conferences if we're just going to call him and ask him questions. I eventually stopped him and said maybe instead of spending his obviously valuable time arguing with me he could answer one or two of my questions. This didn't sound like fun to him. He answered everything with, "I don't have that information at my fingertips."

Eventually, something I said must have registered. As I was writing this post he called back with the information.

But seriously... I've never had this much trouble getting standard information about something not police-related.

I really think Tony Snow has met his match.

Maybe if I were lumpier...

While I was picking up prescriptions at Rite Aid yesterday I saw a woman carefully looking through all the options in the condom aisle. Picking up each box, comparing written descriptions, turning the boxes over in her hand to inspect every side. Considering colors, flavors, textures -- everything.

She was in her mid-forties or early fifties, was very lumpy and had short, frizzy, awkwardly-dyed-reddish-brown hair. She was wearing black tapered sweatpants that were somehow tight from ass all the way down to ankle (maybe *she* was also tapered) and the lumps of cellulite seemed to be trying mightily to come out for air. She was also wearing a bright red T-shirt.

Last month, I think, I would have been happy for her.

But all I could think was -- seriously? *She's* getting sex and I'm not?

Yeah...

Zippity doo da

There's nothing like writing a story about euthanizing kittens to make a shitty day That Much Worse.

I see London, I see France...

Anyone caught "sagging" their pants in Delcambre, Lousiana, is likely to face a $500 fine and/or six months in jail.

The town council there passed an ordinance that will go into effect once the mayor signs it (and she has confirmed that she plans to sign it). The ordinance reads:

“It shall be unlawful for any person in any public place or in view of the
public to be found in a state of nudity, or partial nudity, or in dress not
becoming to his or her sex, or in any indecent exposure of his or her person or
undergarments, or be guilty of any indecent or lewd behavior.”

Essentially, the ordinance is saying that showing body parts in public shall be illegal, and the underpants count as a body part.

In addition to the possibility of being arrested by an officer who gets a peek at your peeper, you can also be arrested if a resident files a complaint against you and signs a sworn affadavit confirming that he/she witnessed the offense.

So. Much. Fun.

And if you're interested in the full story, here it is at the Daily Iberian, apparently the town's "official journal."
http://iberianet.com/articles/2007/06/13/news/news/news56.txt

"The Gamete Games"

In trying to find a new angle on Father's Day, the New York Times decided to do a story on sperm. How they're produced, what they look like, how they work. Just a straight-up, detailed account of the inner workings of the male reproductive system.

It starts like this:

We are fast approaching Father’s Day, the festive occasion on which we plague
Dad with yet another necktie or collect phone call and just generally strive to
remind the big guy of the central verity of paternity — that it’s a lot more fun
to become a father than to be one. “I won’t lie to you,” said the great Homer
Simpson. “Fatherhood isn’t easy like motherhood.” Yet in our insistence that men
are more than elaborately engineered gamete vectors, we neglect the marvels of
their elaborately engineered gametes. As the scientists who study male germ
cells will readily attest, sperm are some of the most extraordinary cells of the
body, a triumph of efficient packaging, sleek design and superspecialization.
Human sperm are extremely compact, and they’ve been stripped of a normal cell’s
protein-making machinery; but when cast into the forbidding environment of the
female reproductive tract, they will learn on the job and change their search
strategies and swim strokes as needed.

Sperm are also fast and as cute as tadpoles. They have chubby teardrop heads and stylish, tapering tails, and they glide, slither, bumble and do figure-eights. So while a father may not be entitled to take the same pride in his sperm as he does in his kids, it’s fair to celebrate the single-minded cellular commas that helped give those children their start.

And then proceeds to turn into a science textbook. Not judging the writer here... I would have no idea how to write an article about sperm with no news hook beyond Father's Day. But... well... sperm.

The missing toilet paper was being hidden by Butts the whole time!

A woman whose last name is Butts faces up to three years in prison for stealing toilet paper from an Iowa courthouse.

Suzanne Marie Butts, 38, was caught taking three rolls of two-ply toilet paper from the storage closet at the courthouse. The discovery came after workers had noticed the toilet paper was disappearing more quickly than usual.

Butts, who is not a courthouse employee, acknowledged taking the three rolls but insisted it was her first time.

The fifth-degree theft charge, a misdemeanor, normally carries a sentence of less than a year in jail. But Butts could face more time if convicted under the state's habitual offender law because she has prior theft convictions, according to the Associated Press.

Because transforming the Democratic Party is like a baseball game

So I was Googling myself and saw that someone blogged about a story I wrote about the Edison primary, which has been running the last two months of my life. The only part of the blog entry that showed up in the Google summary was "In the middle of Erica Harbatkin's coverage of the Edison election results..." and I was intrigued to find out what that was. Turns out:

The entry, from a blog called "Laughing at the Pieces :

Choi at the Bat

I’m sure they’ll fix this on the main site, so I’m pasting a bit of it here for posterity. In the middle of Erica Harbatkin's coverage of the Edison election results in the Home News Tribune (mayor Jun Choi’s handpicked slate of newcomers won), something strange happens. Take a look:

EDISON — Mayor Jun Choi's slate of candidates won the Democratic council primary on Tuesday, giving the mayor control of the township's divided Democratic party.

Choi's Edison Democratic Party slate, which was full of political newcomers handpicked by the mayor, beat out the incumbents on the council and a third ticket headed by former Councilman Bill Stephens for the Democratic Party line in the November General Election.

The winning slate is composed of Washington Elementary School Principal AnnMarie Griffin-Ussak; former Edison boys baseball coach Wayne Mascola; Edison Township Education Foundation founder and President Melissa Perilstein; and Sudhanshu Prasad, an internal-medicine specialist and former chairman of JFK Medical Center's Department of Medicine.

Official numbers were not available Tuesday night because District 26 had a zero tally sheet, but results without those numbers had Griffin-Ussak with 3,607 votes, Perilstein with 3,486, Prasad with 3,500 and Mascola with 3,389.

"We started this movement two years ago and onto the diamond for the top of the sixth. But Randolph, which was down to its final strike in the sectional semifinal on May 29 and came-from-behind to win the sectional final, turned four hits, including a triple and two doubles, two walks and an Edison error into six runs.

HUH?

I follow American politics, so I’m no stranger to the labored sports metaphor. But it’s usually not this long. Sure, there’s a baseball coach among the winners, but Jack Kemp didn’t talk about football this much.

Let’s continue, shall we?

Senior catcher Rob Kral, who homered four times in Friday's sectional final, hit a grand slam in the top of the seventh for Randolph (23-7) to conclude the scoring. Winning pitcher Steve Zavala (13-1) homered in the first at bat of the game and went 3-for-4 with four runs and three RBIs to help fuel the Morris County school's 14-hit attack…

And it goes on for three more paragraphs, before resuming the election coverage.

Um… go Eagles? And congratulations, councilmen-elect?

I’d prefer a few more checks and balances in my soup, but I have hope that Mayor Choi and his handpicked team of councilmen govern responsibly, and don’t run on a pop fly unless there are already two outs.

Rob

Yup. That's my paper.